


a sam adams moment

by Siria



Category: Bones (TV), Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe, Community: cliche_bingo, Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-27
Updated: 2009-07-27
Packaged: 2017-10-03 19:15:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siria/pseuds/Siria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The clutch of seven ZPMs they find on Dedahr's rocky third moon results, in rough chronological order, in a brief fainting fit on Rodney's part; a message back to Atlantis that creates near hysteria amongst its scientists and startles a truly blasphemous exclamation in Czech out of Zelenka; a fully-powered city whose midnight glow is refracted through its shields; five destroyed hive ships and one very raucous, ruus-wine fuelled celebration; wormhole travel back to Earth, which is soon protected once more by the Ancient weapons platform in Antarctica; and the IOC declaring that the expedition's brief can be expanded from defence to broader exploration.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a sam adams moment

**Author's Note:**

> For dogeared, who has been maimed! Thanks to sheafrotherdon for betaing. Written for cliche_bingo, for the prompt 'freestyle crossover.'

The clutch of seven ZPMs they find on Dedahr's rocky third moon results, in rough chronological order, in a brief fainting fit on Rodney's part; a message back to Atlantis that creates near hysteria amongst its scientists and startles a truly blasphemous exclamation in Czech out of Zelenka; a fully-powered city whose midnight glow is refracted through its shields; five destroyed hive ships and one very raucous, _ruus_-wine fuelled celebration; wormhole travel back to Earth, which is soon protected once more by the Ancient weapons platform in Antarctica; and the IOC declaring that the expedition's brief can be expanded from defence to broader exploration.

A broader brief means a need for more people with new skills, and within a matter of months, Atlantis starts to become the kind of place that John thinks Elizabeth always wanted it to be: claiming rooms in new living quarters all over the city are cosmologists and marine biologists, biochemists and geophysicists, sociologists and anthropologists and archaeologists and demographers and dozens more who have specialisations that John has never even heard of. Most of them are from Earth, but a couple are from Athos and Hoff and Gelder and Hallona. John makes a point of being in the gate room as each batch of new arrivals gates in—no matter whether it's a group of the new international 'gate teams, fresh from training with the SGC, or nervous geneticists from Hoff. There's no way he can greet all of them in person, but he likes being able to see each new person who becomes a part of this community the instant their face lights up with wonder at John's city.

Today's dial-in from Earth is bringing the last of the current group of SGC trainees, and as many supply crates as can be pushed through the worm hole in thirty-eight minutes—boxes of hybrid seeds and olive saplings and cocoa beans (an unsurprising hit as a trade commodity), spare computer parts and flash drives full of music and TV and the half-a-hundred different things that the various department heads have deemed vital for them to get through the eight months to the next dial-in. They have enough power to be able to dial back to Earth more often, but now that he's got seven ZPMs to play with, Rodney's become jealous of them, hoarding their power against unforeseen eventualities, and John can't say that he minds this careful distance so much. He's got his surfboard, his music, his guitar—Earth's given him little else that he wants to carry with him, and less to draw him back.

John rests his forearms on the balcony rail and counts the crates that come rolling through the stargate—twenty-nine, thirty, thirty-one—before they're corralled by waiting Marines and sent onwards into the city. Next to him, Rodney is ticking things off on a clipboard and muttering to himself. Vaguely, John makes out something about how incompetent USAF bureaucrats had _better_ not have misplaced Rodney's fissionable nuclear material _this_ time, but figures it's better not to pay closer attention. John hadn't bothered to snag a list of the arrivals from Chuck, but he counts teams in stiff, new BDUs with flag patches from China and Australia, India and Russia, Brazil and the UK and Ireland; and then the last group through, just before the wormhole flares out of existence are—

His eyes widen and his jaw drops just a little, and then John's leaning over the railings and yelling, in defiance of the laws of gravity and Rodney's startled squawk. "BOOSTER?"

There's a moment of startled incomprehension on the face of the man standing on the gate room floor—but then John gets a blinding grin and a fist-pump and a roar of "SHEP-MAN!"

"What the _hell_?" Rodney asks him, "are we playing host to spontaneous psychotic breaks now, or—", and his eyes grow wide when John thumps him on the shoulder in delight before pushing past him and clattering down the stairs. The other three members of the newly-arrived team look a little startled at being greeted in such a manner by the head of the Atlantean military—a full-bird Colonel with a stubbled jaw and untied boot laces, even—but that doesn't stop John from chest-bumping Booth and slapping him hard on the back in patented, Afghanistan-tried-and-tested manner.

"Man," Booth says, "_you're_ the hard-ass colonel they were trying to scare us with back at the SGC?"

"_You're_ the best and the brightest they're supposed to be sending me?" John's pretty sure from the ache in his cheeks that his grin is as wide as Booth's.

"Jackass," Booth says.

"Asshole." There's probably some regulation somewhere that forbids a colonel from getting into a mock fist-fight with a major in full view of curious Marines, so John settles for punching Booth lightly in the shoulder. Booth had been with him in Afghanistan, one of the few guys there that John had trusted to have his back completely—loyal and laid-back, a sniper with a shot as good as Ronon's and a knowledge of the Spiderman back catalogue that was maybe even better than John's own.

"I'm confused," says one of the women in Booth's group. Tall and straight-backed, she has a husky voice and a furrowed line of confusion between her eyebrows.

"Male bonding, sweetie," says another of them. She's winding a curl of her hair around one finger, and she's looking at John with an expression on her face that can only be described as a leer. "It's very anthropological."

"Welcome to the US Air Force," the third woman says. She's got a colonel's wings on her collar, and a wry expression on her face. John thinks he recognises her from past briefings in the SGC—Cam Saroyan, commonly referred to as 'the _other_ Colonel Cam' (or sometime 'the sane one') to distinguish her from Cam Mitchell.

"No," the first woman protests, "Anthropology makes sense! Their conversation clearly does not!"

"I've been saying that for years," Rodney says from behind John. John looks around to see that Rodney and Ronon have joined them. Rodney's got his hands stuffed into his pockets, and there's a quizzical look on his face; Ronon just looks faintly amused. "But you're going to find that logic has little meaning here at times." He takes out one hand and holds it out to the anthropology woman. "Dr Rodney McKay. I'm the CSO here."

"Dr Temperance Brennan. I'm a forensic anthropologist, formerly with the Smithsonian. I think we've already communicated by email—about the lab space that's going to be provided for processing the remains? Because I think that..." Rodney and Brennan head off in the direction of the labs, both of them talking nine dozen to the minute, hands gesticulating and technobabble flying, Brennan's pack still on her back. John has the eerie suspicion that the two of them are either going to kill one another, or unite to unleash some kind of unholy reign of terror on the city.

"Should I be worried?" John asks Booth.

"Probably," Booth says, though he doesn't sound overly stressed about it. (Sure sign of a rookie in the Pegasus Galaxy; never underestimate the kind of trouble McKay could get into when left alone in an empty room with only a stick of gum and a tooth pick.) Booth's gaze follows Brennan the same way that John's follows Rodney, and the two of them exchange sheepish grins when they realise this. No way they're ever going to talk about it, but there's a certain camaraderie to be had in knowing that you're both in a significant amount of trouble where your head and your heart are concerned.

"I am not worried at _all_," the curly-haired woman says. She's homed in on Ronon. "Hi, I'm Angela. Angela Montenegro. You are _delightful_."

John raises an eyebrow at Booth.

"Yeah," Booth says, "you should be worried about that, too."

John shrugs. "I have beer." He takes his stress-relieving opportunities where he can—beer and months-old recordings of college football games and back issues of the universe's most-travelled golf magazine—and in the grand scheme of things, Ronon looking like an over-sexed deer in the headlights of a member of Booth's team is not a Sam Adams-worthy moment.

Booth checks his watch. "Eleven in the morning, SGC time," he says. "Maybe it's a little early."

"Eh," John says and hitches a shoulder. "We're on our own clock here. C'mon. We got a few years to catch up on, buddy." And he leads Booth off into the barely-controlled chaos of his city as it expands to welcome more new arrivals—points out the mess hall and the south pier and the way the light bursts clean and sharp through the panes of stained glass—wonders to himself, all over again, how strange the paths that have led them all here, how deep the ties that bind.


End file.
